David Simon is nothing if not opinionated and willing share those opinions at great length just about any time and any place, so it probably won’t shock you to learn that he delivered a passionate, impromptu speech about income inequality and what it means for America’s future while at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, Australia. The Guardian has a full, edited transcript, which is certainly worth a read if only because it puts the following blockquote in better context — especially the thing about Marx, which is getting a lot of coverage today from people who can’t get past the word “Marx” in a sentence without their brain shooting out their ears — but here’s a brief excerpt.

So I’m astonished that at this late date I’m standing here and saying we might want to go back for this guy Marx that we were laughing at, if not for his prescriptions, then at least for his depiction of what is possible if you don’t mitigate the authority of capitalism, if you don’t embrace some other values for human endeavour.

And that’s what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy. It was about them trying to solve, for lack of a better term, an existential crisis. In their irrelevance, their economic irrelevance, they were nonetheless still on the ground occupying this place called Baltimore and they were going to have to endure somehow. [Guardian]

“Where’s Wallace at? Huh? Where’s the boy, String? WHERE THE F*CK IS WALLACE?”

You have every opportunity to go to an Occupy Meeting and listen to a poor person talk about the ills of capitalism. Their library education is most likely much better than any degree you got from your university anyway.

Yes Otto Man I actually read it. And I’ve read Smith as well as Marx. I get what Simon is trying to say. It’s not a unique opinion. I just happen to disagree with him, and you on this. I didn’t just see Marx and throw on my American flag and yell “‘Merica!” and pretend I’m in the 50’s and I’m fighting a communist. He clearly isn’t a socialist. I just don’t agree that you can somehow combine the two ideas and end poverty and racial issues. He does make good points, about pure capitalism ignoring the plight of the poor and how a free market does generate wealth but he loses me when he goes into this rant about how we still need government for health insurance and how is abandoning the idea of public education is a problem. And my problem with him is he has the luxury to criticize those things because he’s wealthy and can afford to buy his way out. He isn’t a father making 50 grand a year who is forced to send his kid to a low grade public school because of where he lives and saw his insurance premumims double.

But he’s entitled to his opinion. Everyone is, if it’s intelligent and informed. Like yours are. What people aren’t entitled to is to be pretentious jackasses who try to take down people who they disagree with because they think they’re better. That just makes you Michael Moore or Bill O’Reilly. So go fuck yourself you pretentious asshole

So I’m the pretentious one here, the one who announced to all the unwashed that I was “actually rather well informed”? Wait, that was you.

I assumed you hadn’t read the piece because it contained lots and lots of lines from Simon that affirmed his support for the free market — lines like “I’m utterly committed to the idea that capitalism has to be the way we generate mass wealth in the coming century” — and yet you insisted that Simon had gotten rich off the free market and then turned around to decry it.

Which, you know, made it sound like you were a fucking moron.

my problem with him is he has the luxury to criticize those things because he’s wealthy and can afford to buy his way out. He isn’t a father making 50 grand a year who is forced to send his kid to a low grade public school because of where he lives and saw his insurance premumims double.

So he’s not allowed to speak out about how there are two Americas in this country — you know, with one of those Americas being a place where insurance premiums did much more than double during the rate explosion of the late 90s and early 00s, the one where people feel trapped in $50K jobs, and, wait for it, the one where schools are of a lower grade than the other ones — because he’s lucky enough to be on the good side and still speaks out against the system that rewarded him?

Well, he has the platform to say it. Not many poor folks from Baltimore are given speaking engagements in Australia or op-ed pieces in the Guardian UK.

But if one of them had been given the mic, you think they’d be praising the miracles of the unfettered free market? Folks making $50K and under tend to vote Democratic by the largest margin in income breakdowns. They’re on Simon’s side in this argument, not yours.

But hey, thanks once again for this site’s daily reminder that modern conservatism has been boiled down to “I got mine, fuck you.”

Healthcare fully joined the Free Market Capitalism barge what, 30 years ago? It isn’t exactly a beacon of success at this point is it? Therefore a rational person would tend to agree with his statements.

I said nothing about him not being able to speak. He’s allowed to speak. Just like a rich white male can have an opinion on, say, abortion. That doesn’t make them an expert on it. I also said nothing of the political affiliations of the people who make whatever a year. I’m aware that lower income and inner city minorities vote heavily democrat. But if this were to be a speech by one those people, and not a rich white celebrity, it would hold more weight. All I said was I disagree with some of what he, and you said, and you got all high and mighty. I did say I was informed because I am, in the context of you assuming I didn’t read the article. I’m sorry I disagree with you and him. I guess that just makes me wrong. But I’m also very certain I didn’t say “I got mine fuck you” especially when I said that pure capitalism does ignore the poor. My disagree with him, and you, is government’s role in the free market. He feels it has one. Clearly you feel that way. I do not.
But in the end you’re just rude and a dick who attacks people who think different because you assume you’re smarter than they are and they’re just idiots.

@Rob Smithson- health care is actually one of the less “free market” industries out there for a couple of big reasons.

1. Thanks to goverent tax policy and wage controls established in WW2 the health care as fringe benefit model has become entrenched in a way it would not have in a truly free market. This not only changes people’s consumption decisions because the costs are not directly passed, but also disadvantages non-employer provided insurance options from gaining market traction.
2. Medicare and Medicaid distort the market since the biggest participant (the USG) is not the recipient of the care and does not have the same pricing and consumption incentives and feed back a regular market participant has, is subject to political considerations a traditional market participant is not and can change the shape of the market by fiat if it so chooses.
3. The health care market is highly regulated by the government through agencies like the FDA. While this can help prevent risky or dangerous treatments it also delays market access for certain treatments, and can subject market access to political gamesmanship (see medical device tax in the ACA) or lobbying. This of course differs from a free market where firms can choose to enter a market and see if their idea gets traction with potential customers as judge.

As such consumption and purchasing decisions and market entry are distorted from what a true free market would look like. If you want to indict the free market health care is a poor exhibit to use.

@Rob – I should also mention that the health insurance market itself is highly and somewhat arbitrarily regulated. Not only with the recent minimum coverage standards in the ACA but also at the state level. Unlike a truly free market insurance market participants face numerous gatekeepers in the form of state insurance commissioners whose incentives and attitudes do not necessarily line up with the potential customers, whereas in a free market the customer is the god king.

@otto man. Obama is a shit president. Obamacare is a complete joke. the economy is in the toilet after 6 years of obama as president (the whole blame bush thing doesnt work anymore, just look at the latest gallup pole on obamas approval if you disagree). and youre a salty troll about the whole ordeal. luckily for america, elections are coming up and the 14 jackasses who voted obamacare in will mostly be voted out. stop the flopping fishes gasping for air on the ground out.

Thank you rich white liberal for generalizing something extremely complex into a very simple point and then blaming something not in any single person’s control on something else that isn’t in anyone’s control. Also thank you for ruining my enjoyment of a show by adding muddling the message with big words no one understands.

the last 3 paragraphs were some real shit, here they are aside from the marx quote:

The last job of capitalism – having won all the battles against labour, having acquired the ultimate authority, almost the ultimate moral authority over what’s a good idea or what’s not, or what’s valued and what’s not – the last journey for capital in my country has been to buy the electoral process, the one venue for reform that remained to Americans.

Right now capital has effectively purchased the government, and you witnessed it again with the healthcare debacle in terms of the $450m that was heaved into Congress, the most broken part of my government, in order that the popular will never actually emerged in any of that legislative process.

So I don’t know what we do if we can’t actually control the representative government that we claim will manifest the popular will. Even if we all start having the same sentiments that I’m arguing for now, I’m not sure we can effect them any more in the same way that we could at the rise of the Great Depression, so maybe it will be the brick. But I hope not.

Does everyone who is bashing the rich white liberal for speaking up about capitalism after game from it listen to poor people? He is privileged no doubt about it, and that brings with it certain responsibilities like being educated and informed. I don’t see too many poor activists being listened to, they are pushed to the side and ignored. So if you want to decry him fine, but you better be going to Occupy meetings and listening to their arguments, otherwise you don’t have a leg to stand on.

Are Occupy meetings still a thing? I remember we went round and round about those here. Having attended an Occupy meeting I was less than impressed with their analysis. They blamed the market and “capitalism” for the injustice of the bank bail out when, of course, the goverent bailed out the banks and a free market would have let them fall (for better or worse).